Also at the show for it’s first official showing was the indie developed arcade shooter, Friction. I actually played through the whole game and when I had left the show I still had the highest score by far (I’ll have to ask what it was as I forgot the exact number). This game is a lot of fun and when it starts it rarely let’s up. There are a ton of things to destroy and that’s part of the fun, just shooting everything that is breakable. One thing that was in the build that wasn’t in any videos we had previously seen was blood and the game sports a red label now. In addition to being fun, the game looks really nice in person and I hope that the video can reflect that on some level. No word on a release yet, but there was some strong interest in the game from what I saw, which is especially nice considering that this is Friction’s first event.
We just recently heard about the formation of a new coin-op game company called Pipeline Games Inc. and they had a decent sized booth at the show with some very interesting products. First is the physical game, The Grip Strength. As you’ll see below, the game is brief and simple and it can work for either ticket redemption or video only depending upon the location. The player selects the appropriate options (except for Phil here who accidentally picks a female :P) and then spends ten seconds pulling the grip to see how strong they are (or aren’t). After you do both hands, the game give you an average and prints out the results on a paper ticket. Also there was This game SUCKS which is an interesting mini-crane that is great for small locations and a few other physical redemption games.
One surprise at the show was a little cocktail cabinet called Lights Out Boxing which was found in an unlikely place – a bill validator booth that was next to the GlobalVR booth. I wasn’t able to find out exactly who it is that made this and Kevin Williams wasn’t sure either the last time I asked him. As you can see it’s also some sort of indie effort as they housed a flash game into the cabinet and wired it up for coin-op play. One problem with it – the Windows cursor was visible in the middle of the screen the whole time. A game like this that is more fluid graphically would be pretty cool, it reminds me of certain boxing games from the past, such as Boxing on the Atari 2600 by Activision.
The ICE booth was pretty big and with it at the front of the show, they made their presence known. They had a few new Panic Musuem cabinets there including a completely redesigned (and nicer looking) theater cab and the new 47″ deluxe cabinets. They also had some redesigned Dog Tags machines (although they weren’t as popular this time as they were at IAAPA), Robin Hood video redemption and a few Rok N’ Bloks cabinets which have been rebranded as Tippin’ Bloks.
I have two videos left to upload, both involving Namco’s booth with Deadstorm Pirates, Go Go Grand Prix, new Nirin software and the standard Razing Storm, but I will probably get a post made about those tomorrow along with some new information on Dead Heat Street Racing.
